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Who's in the Office? The American Workday in One Graph
- blueskin_ 12y agoInteresting data, reminds me of that thread a few months ago about work start times by city; I expected a bit more variation on some of the industries here, but I guess most of them are large categories.
- bshimmin 12y agoGreat graph, though I was a bit confused by the categories - I ended up picking "Computer and mathematical", which seemed to be a strange way to describe what I do (but hey, I'm not American either).
- osandov 12y agoI expected to see more night owls in the "Computer and mathematical" category, but it looks like we're more conventional than the average.
- Iftheshoefits 12y agoThe vast majority of computer programming is done in "stodgy", "boring" settings, like offices and for government projects, so this really shouldn't be a surprise for that field. The "work anywhere when you like, just get your 8 in" concept is relatively niche, even in the Valley "glamor" bubble.
- odonnellryan 12y agoDo you do your best work at night? I have the most fun coding at midnight with a cup of coffee. But, my work schedule doesn't permit that much...
- kyllo 12y agoExactly. According to Oracle there are approximately 9 million Java developers in the world, and since Java is the enterprise programming language, an awful lot of them are working 8-5 in a cubicle.
- randlet 12y agoI don't have numbers to back it up, but I suspect there are a huge number of programmers who work in mega-corps where the office is empty by 5pm.
- forgottenpass 12y agoThe American Time Use Survey only measures "paid work" which I assume excludes personal projects and most "night owl" activity other than being in operations/on call or having a particularly bad job.
- mhurron 12y agoIT professionals (as a group) aren't really any different than any other group of workers.
- walshemj 12y agoProfessional "exempt" workers I think you meant to say it will be quite different to a shift worker on the line at Ford or GM
- mhurron 12y agoNo, I didn't. There are IT shift workers too. The post I was replying to said they thought Computer and Math workers would be more night owls. Something that is really just based on the mothers basement late at night stereotype of those called geeks. I was saying that IT workers just aren't that different than everyone else.
- walshemj 12y agoWell the number of hourly paid tape ops or punch card operators is probably not that many any more. And don't forget those special laws that where passed to categorise hourly paid IT workers as exempt.
- aianus 12y agoWeird, I came to work once at Twitter at 9am and I was the only one in sight on the whole floor.
- blt 12y agoI need to work at Twitter. I am a complete night owl and always push the limits of acceptable lateness at my corporate programming job.
- johnward 12y agoI used to come in at 7am to beat traffic at my startup. There would only be a handful of people until everyone else started rolling in around 10. After acquisition by IBM basically everyone is there at 9 for a stand up and now I come in later when I do go in.
- howeyc 12y agoDo 9-5 jobs with paid lunch exist? Everything I've seen is either 8-5 or 9-6 or some variation of that. Heck, where I am now is 9 hour days plus they encourage you to take lunch, 7-5. Half-day Friday though.
- amwelles 12y agoI have a friend who works for a large software company (SAS), and he works 9-5 with an hour lunch in the middle.
- king_jester 12y agoSome still do, I guess it largely depends on the company. Each company I've worked at the last several years were 9-5 or 10-6 with lunch break in the middle somewhere.
- ianstallings 12y agoI work any hours I want basically, I just have to show up to weekly meetings. But I work for a startup where the success of the business is linked to my efforts. So it behooves me to eat a quick lunch and return to work. It's the same with my vacation. In my agreement it said "vacation: as you see fit". I hope to use that the same way, responsibly. It's not for everyone obviously. Some people don't work the same way and will take advantage.
- stronglikedan 12y ago> So it behooves me to eat a quick lunch and return to work. As you stated, it's not for everyone. I went from a position with a mandatory half hour lunch to one where I had an optional lunch up to an hour long. I find that I'm much more productive when I take a full hour for lunch, and then stay an extra half hour after when I would normally leave. It really breaks up my day, and time doesn't seem to drag on towards the end of the day. It also helps that I live close to work, so I can go home and play with my dog for a while. She has really good ideas, and has helped me get through some conundrums.
- Brandon0 12y ago
- apostate 12y agoA couple of things that one would guess, but are neat none the less: Food prep is the only one without a dip during the lunch hour (they are preparing what everyone else is eating). Also, protective services has the fattest tails (most late shift workers).
- cagenut 12y agoif you take one of this graph for the east coast and overlay it with another one 3 hours shifted for the west coast, you get the traffic graph for pretty much every US news site. thats why the founder of buzzfeed calls it the "bored at work network".
- lordbusiness 12y agoI'd be interested in seeing a weekday version of this data. Realtors, car sales, etc, all work weekends. In tech, what about weekend maintenance windows? Admittedly, that's probably less of a thing now we have redundancy and continuous deployment practises; the concept of a late night / weekend change window is diminishing in my personal experience. I'm intrigued if that's true across the tech industry.
- Someone1234 12y ago> Admittedly, that's probably less of a thing now we have redundancy and continuous deployment practises; the concept of a late night / weekend change window is diminishing in my personal experience. I'm intrigued if that's true across the tech industry. Odd, my experience is exactly the opposite. Increase complexity breads increasing numbers of potential problems, which causes partial outages at unpredictable times and for unpredictable reasons (or reasons so complex they are perceived as unpredictable). Now are these "user impacting?" Often times, no. But they will become user impacting if left for too long (e.g. new instances aren't able to connect to a database, but existing ones are connected: classic DNS problems). So people are still waking up in the middle of the night to fix stuff when the alerts start streaming in. The only thing that has REALLY changed is that now you can often fix these issues from your bedroom in your PJs. Since the AWS, Azure, Rackspace, etc console doesn't care where you are or what you're wearing. But companies are getting no better at actually having around the clock staff. When they used to out-source a dedicated server the data centre would employ 24/7 staff on real shifts, Amazon/Rackspace/Google/etc do the same, but for the software side of things you rarely see it (never?). Most companies just expect employees to be on-call 24/7 as part of their salary (unpaid overtime essentially).
- spindritf 12y agoDoctors match average the best? Am I reading that right? Legal skips lunches the most. Engineers are most likely to be in office at peak hours along with legal and finance.
- josu 12y agoWhy is there a peak at 3 am for legal? It looks like an statistical error to me, unless it has something to do with conference calls and people starting their workday in Europe.
- lilsunnybee 12y agoLegal doesn't even start climbing from 0 until after 6 am. Are you looking at "protective services" perhaps, which has a slightly-pre-3 am trough?
- josu 12y agoThis bump http://i.imgur.com/dt0iVfG.png http://i.imgur.com/dt0iVfG.png
- lilsunnybee 12y agoOops I'm sorry. I missed it.
- ascotan 12y agohmm. "computer" is grouped with "mathematical" jobs. And these people are less likely to come in early and less likely to stay late. Seems reasonable...